


After Life

by Viridian5



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Androids, Angst, Clones, Drama, Episode Related, M/M, forever incomplete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-01
Updated: 2005-03-01
Packaged: 2017-11-01 00:14:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harper dies and kind of lives again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Life

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers from “The Devil Take the Hindmost” through season two. 
> 
> This will unfortunately be unfinished for life since season four and especially five poisoned me against the show so hard and I can't bear the intense canon review that would be necessary to write this fic as I'd usually intended, but I think there are enough good and thoughtful sections in here to share it with potential readers.
> 
> Season one ended on a major cliffhanger that left me hanging all summer. I had a bizarre, worried feeling about Harper, especially since none of the initial season two episode spoilers mentioned him. Then _TV Guide_ ’s fall TV blurb said that Harper would be impregnated with Magog larvae in the season two premiere, a fate which had been a death sentence previously. Then I had to wait a month for the premiere. I spent that month thinking of ways he could die but still be with the show as a character, and the way I used in this story is my favorite. Thus, some of this has been percolating in my head since September 2001.
> 
> Collide’s _Chasing the Ghost_ , which sounds like the blurring of humanity into the machine, helped provide the mood. 
> 
> The odds are very good that readers will find at least _some_ of this disturbing.

_“Passed around_  
_In little pieces (in little pieces)_  
_The body, the body and the flesh....”_  
    -- “The Family and the Fishing Net” by Peter Gabriel  
\-----------------------------------------------------

Sitting in med-bay, Beka stared hollowly into space, her holonovel drooping from her fingers. She didn’t have the concentration for it, not with everything going on. Sometimes she could just barely hear a sound from the other room, where Trance was trying to surgically remove the larvae from Tyr. They hoped the larvae could be taken out without destroying the host, what Magog larvae usually did when attacked. Elsewhere, Rev worked on a drug they hoped would stop the larvae from feasting on their crewmembers. And next to her... next to her....

Trance had put Harper on the strongest sedative he could survive, hoping to sedate the larvae too. He was lying on the pallet dressed all in loose med-bay white, giving Beka the uneasy feeling that he was dressed for Heaven. The white made his pale skin look paler to the point of unhealthiness. White healing pads studded his body in all the places he’d been bitten or slashed, the one on his cheekbone where a Magog had bitten into his _face_ unsettling Beka the worst. She wanted to pet his hair, and yet the thought of touching him left her revolted. And hating herself for it.

Harper had to come through. Tyr had to come through. It wouldn’t be fair if that nova bomb Dylan had commanded her to lob at the Worldship had failed to kill her crew only for her to watch some of them die later anyway.

Beka heard a rustling that made her jump, but it was just Harper moving. Except that he shouldn’t be moving, not as doped up as he was. A low sound, thick with pain, came out of his mouth.

“Harper, what’s wrong?” Stupid question. Everything was wrong.

Harper opened his eyes and groaned, clasping his arms tight around his body. “They’re moving. They’re--” He screamed and wrenched himself into a fetal position, then jerked out straight in a spasm. “It hurts!”

“It’s too early!”

“You think I don’t fucking know that?” His voice sounded broken. “Plug me in.”

He was talking nonsense. The pain had to be unbearable. Beka already had her hand on her gun, hoping beyond hope that she wouldn’t have to use it. “What?”

“It hurts so bad, and you can’t sedate me any more ’cause look how much good that did, and I can’t do anything to help myself, so at least let me get my mind the fuck out of my body while--” He wrenched his eyes shut and clasped his arms tight over his stomach. “Fuck! Please, Beka, please, Beka--”

Trying not to think, Beka found a cord he could use, plugged one end into his data port, and the other into the nearest outlet on the wall. It felt like giving up, but who the hell was she to say that he had to be conscious inside his body as it was torn apart from the inside? Swallowing hard, she said, “Go, Harper, go.”

Harper clasped her hand tightly. “Remember my will.”

“Won’t forget it. If it happens, you’ll be avenged.”

“Thank you, Beka. Love you....” When he let go of her hand and sent his mind into Andromeda’s matrix, some of the pain left his face. At least his mind was safe. 

From the movement of the cloth over his stomach, his body seemed to be roiling. Horrified, Beka backed away. “Trance! Andromeda! Dylan! Harper’s larvae are going critical! Somebody help him!” 

“I’m here, Beka,” Rev said from the doorway.

“How did you--”

“I heard them.”

The larvae. Beka felt sick. “How’s the fucking drug coming along?”

“Nowhere near fast enough.”

“Then get back to it!”

“It won’t be finished in time to save him.”

“So you just stop and give up?”

“Beka.” Rev had his serious, preacher’s expression on. “This is a horrible, horrible thing, but Harper cannot be saved. Yet some good, some life, could still come out of it.”

She couldn’t believe this. Even having heard a little bit about what had happened at Serendipity, she couldn’t believe this. “They’re killers. Right now, they’re killing Harper. Harper asked me to avenge his death.”

“He’s not in his right mind.”

“He made his wishes very clear and recorded them right after the massacre at the Serendipity settlement.” She smiled bitterly as Rev winced a little. But did he wince at the memory or how she referred to it? “These larvae are his murderers, and I’m executing them, just as he wanted me to.”

“I have found the Way. Can’t they?”

“And your kids at Serendipity killed the Hajira. Maybe you see that as a happy ending, but I sure as hell don’t.”

Harper’s body bucked again, and Beka drew her gun. She didn’t want to do this, she so didn’t want to do this.... Rev _growled_.

******************************************************

Harper still felt the pain, but it seemed distant here, more intellectual and abstract. The matrix looked far too dark. The Enigma really had ripped the shit out of his baby. So much needed to be repaired.... He went to the closest dark corner and started to work.

“What are you doing?” Andromeda asked, manifesting a body at Harper-size.

“What I do.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Darlin’, I could do this or think about what’s going on in my home sweet home, namely my poor, abused body. I’d rather work.”

******************************************************

Harper spasmed, and it looked like something was punching up through his stomach. Her eyes hot, Beka brought up her gun. She didn’t want to do this, this was Harper, she didn’t want to do this....

Rev grabbed her gun hand, sending a stabbing pain through her wrist. “I will not let you kill him!” he snarled.

She fought back, but he was stronger. She kicked at him, but he was faster and she couldn’t connect. “Him or them?” she asked. The white of Harper’s clothing started to turn red and wet. “Let go of me and let me do the right thing!”

******************************************************

Harper felt a weird, sick tug. “I have to see what’s going on.” Even though he knew. Even though his imagination and past experience gave him all the mental images of it he needed.

“No, Harper,” Andromeda said.

“I have to see--”

She grabbed him and hugged him. “ _No_.”

******************************************************

When Dylan ran into the room with Rommie, he saw Beka and Rev struggling while Harper.... He couldn’t look at Harper, black-red on white, spasming.... Blood ran down Beka’s gun hand. 

“Rommie, grab Rev and restrain him!”

Rommie yanked him away, taking a wicked claw slice across her face that peeled skin away from metal in the process. Rev looked utterly savage as he fought her grip and pull. Dylan trusted her to do what she had to do.

He trusted Beka too, but she.... Harper was more than her crew, he was family, and Dylan was captain here. “Beka, you don’t have to be the one. I can do this--” As much as he didn’t want to.

He wondered if Beka even realized that she had tears running down her face. “He’s _mine_ ,” she said. “My crew. My promise. It’s up to me.”

With a sickly, wet ripping sound, a small clawed hand, thick with gore, punched up through Harper’s stomach, and Beka started to fire her gun, screaming the whole time. Rev screamed too. Even small limb or head that popped up was burned or pulverized, razed all the way down to the surface of the gurney. Though Harper’s body.

******************************************************

“I won’t go like this!” Harper shouted from within the protective circle of Andromeda’s arms. “I won’t! I can still--”

His signal shattered, leaving a few ripples of static that feathered along her self, then nothing at all. He was gone.

He was gone.

******************************************************

Beka laughed in a way that sounded more like a sob. “He smells like an overcooked roast. Mixed with a malfunctioning hairdryer.”

Harper wasn’t all white anymore. He was red and black and red-spattered white. She could see his actual ribs.... From the middle of his ribs down to just above the crotch, he was a burnt and ripped up mess. Above and below the ruin, he looked almost normal, though blood-spattered. But he was very obviously dead. At least she didn’t have to shut his eyes, since they already were shut. He still had an expression of pain on his face. She tried to wipe a trail of blood off his nose, but all she did was smear it. 

He had been family, and she’d led him to the very death he’d spent most of his life running from.

Dylan looked like he would never move again, deep in what appeared to be shock and horror. Rommie had a stiff expression on her face that suggested she held back a quiet desolation. Rev... Rev looked horrified. For whatever reason. She didn’t know him anymore. She didn’t want to either.

Trance rushed out, her own clothing spattered with blood. “This isn’t right,” she said softly, her lips turning pale. “We had more time....”

“Where the hell were you?” Beka asked.

“The surgery.... Tyr started to flatline. I was saving him. I saved Tyr.” She shook her head and stared at Harper. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen....”

So the surgery wouldn’t have saved Harper’s life, if it had come so close to killing a Nietzschean. Beka tried to take a little comfort in that. She couldn’t. She hooked her gun back onto her belt, then winced. Her wrist was sliced up, and the wounds burned. She glared at Rev.

“Beka, I am sorry,” Rev said. “I was distraught.”

“You made a choice here, Rev,” Beka said. “That you were ‘distraught’ just makes me certain that it came from the heart. You chose Harper’s killers over your own crew.”

“He--”

“Andromeda, play Harper file ‘Serendipity living will and testament.’”

An image of Harper, sitting in his quarters, came up on screen, making Beka’s chest hurt. But this was important. “I don’t believe I have to do this,” his recorded image said. “It should be common sense. But after Serendipity....” He looked down, then up. “I, Seamus Zelazny Harper, being of sound mind and body, would like to record these arrangements in the event that I’m infested with Magog larvae. If there’s no way to save me, give me a fast death. Kill the larvae too, but for them you can make it as slow and painful as you’d like. No excuses. I don’t care if the larvae might be born ‘innocent,’ whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, or if you think they might single-handedly bring about a new Commonwealth or if they have my eyes, though I figure the only way they’d have my eyes would be clutched in their claws. Kill the little fuckers who murdered me. Because, yeah, they killed me, not you. You’ll just be making it less painful and a lot easier for me, and don’t forget about that whole ‘saving yourselves from a Magog rampage’ thing.”

Harper swallowed. “If you’re watching this, then things must be really bad. I want you to know... that I love all of you. Even Tyr! My years with you guys have been the best of my life, hands down. I’ve had good friends and an engineer’s dream job. The dream job bit? That would be Rommie and Andromeda, you beautiful babes you. I never thought I’d get to see space and never expected to get _this_ old actually.... Everybody, whatever I have left behind is yours to split up any way you like, not that I think you guys will really want anything of mine. Beka can’t even appreciate the Weissbrau, poor thing. If I even have any left. Damn, is there anything else?” He looked tired and upset. “Can’t think of anything. Andromeda, please flag this clip as important and play it under the applicable circumstances.” His salute tried to look jaunty but didn’t. “Seamus Harper, signing out.” The recording stopped.

“Andromeda?” Dylan asked.

A subdued looking Andromeda popped up in hologram form. “I should have played this unprompted, but I’ve taken damage that prevented some of my automatic functions from working properly.”

“And you’ve had a lot on your mind,” Trance said. Andromeda faded out.

Beka swiped at her eyes, having never seen the end of this clip before. And he looked so alive.... “So, Rev, he made arrangements and asked me to do this.” He hadn’t trusted Rev to do the right thing. Or Dylan, probably. “I’m your captain, and you attacked me. More than that, we were your friends.” Seven years. Seven years, and he’d sliced into her and tried to stop her from keeping her promise.

“Rommie, escort Reverend Bem to the brig so he can meditate on what he did,” Dylan said as he stood by Harper’s side. Good for him.

Rev softly replied, “I need no escort. I will go.”

Glancing at Beka’s wrist, Dylan said, “I’d feel better if you had one anyway.”

As Rommie took him by the arm and led him away, Trance said, “I should get back to Tyr. He’s not entirely stable.” Her eyes darted back to Harper’s gurney, and she shook her head.

“Yeah. Go, Trance. Take care of him,” Beka answered.

That left her and Captain Terrific alone in the room. She wondered if even he could find something pithy and inspirational to pull out of his ass to say to her.

******************************************************

Dylan wanted to cross Harper’s arms over his chest in the High Guard funeral style, but the gaping ruin just under that chest kept stopping him. It left him repulsed and fascinated. This was a member of his crew, and while he’d lost crewmembers before, this time it had been particularly horrific. He could feel Harper’s skin beginning to chill and smelled overcooked meat, burnt hair, and the heavy, metal scent of blood. One small, charred hand, tipped with claws, rested atop Harper’s ribcage. Dylan suspected that he was in shock, and he hadn’t even been the one to administer the killing shots.

Harper was so still. Harper should never be this still.

Looking haggard, Beka stared, lost, into what seemed to be some nightmare world. He should say something, but what? He might not be accustomed to having a small family-like crew, but she’d been working this way for years longer. She’d known Harper for years. While the Long Night may have left the general run of civilians far more hardened and accustomed to violence and death than they’d been in his day, this still had to be hard for her to deal with.

But he had to say something. He was the captain. Inspiring the troops to go on after a loss was what the captain had to do. 

First, though, he had to inspire himself. 300 years after its dissolution, a High Guard decision had reached out and killed a member of his crew. They all could have died, as the hidden Andromeda backup copy took over and forced them to recreate what had turned out to be a suicide mission. A mission the High Guard _knew_ had left its entire crew dead and the ship’s AI traumatized, yet left untreated and buried without warning inside the ship.

Harper had been killed by the High Guard.

Beka walked to the gurney and looked down. “When I was on Flash, I said and did some horrible things to him. I nearly strangled him. He never demanded an apology, but I gave him one, at least.” Her voice sounded dead.

He couldn’t let her blame herself. “He loved you, Beka.”

“And what good did it do him? Since I saved him from Earth, I used to figure that I could take advantage of him any way I wanted. He had no money and didn’t know anyone, so I just did whatever I wanted with him, knowing he had nowhere else to go. He owed me, right? And it wasn’t like he complained all that much. Anything must have been better than going back to Earth. I used that as a threat too sometimes. ‘Do what I say, or I’ll dropkick you back down that gravity well and you’re never getting out again.’ I’d saved him, I figured. But all I did was save him for this.”

“You treated him like family.”

“Like a member of the Valentine family. It’s not the same thing.”

 

Harper no longer resided in this vessel. It was just cooling meat now.

“I killed him,” Andromeda said.

“No, you didn’t,” Rommie replied.

“Yes, I did, a part of me did. A version of me. When he found the backup, he asked me if I thought it would be okay to run it for a comparison, and I told him yes. It was me. She took me over and sent my crew on a suicide mission. She killed Harper. And all we could do to defeat her was integrate her into myself. She’s inside us. What other demons might we have inside us that could rip their way loose like Harper’s larvae?” She almost sounded hysterical.

Her words led Rommie down a pathway to a thought that troubled her. Harper was-- had been her engineer, the only one in this time period. Dylan knew some fundamentals, but he couldn’t take care of her as Harper had. What if other backups and flaws waited, buried inside her?

“I heard that,” her other self said. “Is it possible? Of course, anything is possible, it seems. We have to talk to Dylan about recruiting a new engineer.”

“Beka won’t be happy.”

“Beka can be practical.”

When she passed Rhade’s container, Rommie’s mouth pursed at the smile on the corpse’s face, so different from the agony and horror etched into Harper’s. A traitor and saboteur had died happy and quickly, while Harper had suffered. It didn’t seem right.

It didn’t seem right to leave Harper’s murderers nestled inside him either, so Rommie removed them from his torso and dumped them in a separate refrigerated container in case Trance wanted them for something. 13 larvae. Traditionally, humans considered 13 to be an ill-favored number. It certainly had been for Harper.

“What’s wrong?” Andromeda asked.

“This may sound silly, but I just realized that I have my hands inside his body,” Rommie answered. “I’m finding it disturbing.”

Andromeda’s mouth twisted a little. “He would have an obscene comment to make about that.”

Rommie smiled. “He came on to us in a few hundred ridiculous ways.”

“He sang to us and told us stories.” The hologram flickered. “He died in my arms. No one has ever done that before.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever get another one like him.” Rommie gently turned his head to the side. “How did this happen? He has a burn mark around his dataport.”

Andromeda closed her eyes, then said, “There was a power surge as he died.”

His skin felt different already, a little thicker as well as cold. Flakes of blood clung to her fingertips as she moved her hand away. She couldn’t leave him like this.

 

Harper’s machine shop looked like a cluttered mess, but Harper probably knew where everything was in it. He’d said once that it only looked like a mess to the untrained eye, and that you should never trust an engineer who had a clean, uncluttered work area. 

   

“This drone made my coffee exactly the way I like it. Doesn’t that strike you as... impossible?”

“Beka, we all would like to believe that Harper isn’t lost to us, but pretending that he’s haunting us won’t bring him back. Ghosts do not exist, especially not coffee-making ghosts.”

   

“Andromeda!” Beka shouted on Deck 18.

Andromeda manifested a hologram in front of her. Humans preferred having a body with a face to talk to. “Yes?”

“Why are you playing a polka?”

The music played very loudly through the corridor. “First, that is swing, not polka. Second... I’m not doing it.” And it scared the hell out of her. She should know everything that was going on inside her.

“It sounds like Harper’s music. Are you still sure we’re not haunted?”

“If Harper were still... around in some form, I would know it. I can’t find a trace of him. This must be a computer glitch.”

“Another one? Andromeda, I’ve seen many computer glitches on the Maru. None of them have ever repaired the ship or prepared my coffee just the way I like it. Or started playing music.”

“Then why can’t I find anything?”

“I don’t know. You’re a big ship, and you’re damaged. That’s a lot to search.”

She was big.... Andromeda had an idea. “Excuse me.” She heard Beka shout, “Hey!” as she blinked out, but maintaining the hologram would be distracting at her current power and maintenance levels. She manifested to look like her fully embodied self and stood in her matrix. “Harper! Harper!” she shouted. “Harper, I need you!” Blue lines nearby pulsed brighter, as if straining, then died down. “Harper, there’s something very important in the slipdrive that needs to be fixed!”

Lines of blue energy from several areas converged in front of her with an almost pained hum, then turned into a transparent image of Harper. “Where? I’ve been trying so hard to keep on top of things, but I don’t seem to be--”

She grabbed him and... hugged him. To make sure she didn’t lose him again. “It can wait a moment.”

He sighed and hugged back. “This is nice. Big improvement. I hate dreams where you know it’s a dream but you can’t seem to make things better. I’ve been trying to pull myself together, and I’ve been trying to get you guys to notice me, but it’s like I’m not even _here_. It was awful....” He stiffened. “This isn’t a dream.”

“Harper--”

“This isn’t a dream, and I can’t feel the thread back to my body. Last thing I remember--” His voice took on a broken sound. “Oh, _fuck_.”

She needed to keep him calm. It would be so easy for his mind to snap under the weight of what had happened to him, and she would not get him back just to lose him now. 

She stroked his hair with one hand and held him tighter with the other. It made no difference in virtuality, but organic embodied creatures seemed to need these things. “But you’re not gone. You’re right here, and you’re talking to me. That’s more than most Magog victims can say.”

“Am I even me?”

“You certainly sound like you.” Andromeda didn’t have the training to discern whether he still had a soul, by human terms. “Everyone will be so happy to hear from you. They’ve missed you deeply.”

He laughed a little, not happily. “I guess that’s something.”

   

“You told him he _died_?” Dylan asked.

“Dylan, he knew that on his own,” Andromeda replied. “I would not tell him he’s wrong when he’s not. That would be insulting to him and might damage his sanity, and right now his sanity needs all the help we can give it.”

 

“How could you miss him still being around?” Dylan asked.

Obviously offended, Andromeda sounded a bit stiff as she answered, “In the trauma of his body dying, his signal fragmented and was spread thinly across my entire matrix. At no point did enough of him exist in one place for me to discern. He’s fortunate that he could reform himself at all after that.”

“He’s fortunate if he’s sane,” Beka said.

 

Harper sat cross-legged three feet off the floor. Andromeda said, “Harper, what are you sitting on?”

He gave her a look. “When _you’re_ a hologram, what do you stand on?”

“You’re a hologram. It’s not like your feet or legs can get tired.”

“I notice you sidestepped my question about what you stand on. And lay off, hey? This is all about attitude.”

It sounded like Harper. Could a shallow recording react exactly like Harper would have that quickly?

   

Beka saw Harper running down the hallway, which was impossible. Instinctively, she went for her gun. “Whoa!” the Not Harper said before he _flew_ for cover at a speed the real Harper never would have been able to manage. “Beka!” The voice sounded somewhat metallic and had a slight echo, but it otherwise sounded like his. “I have a slipstream drive emergency to take care of, so I couldn’t put the finishing touches on the body before taking it for this test run. Can you _not_ shoot me so I can do my job?”

“This is your android body?”

“Duh.”

“I didn’t think it was ready yet.”

“It isn’t, really, and can I get going?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

It stood. “Thanks.” It really looked like him, even down to the lines around his eyes and the dataport cover on his neck. It had even spiked its hair.

“You didn’t change your height?”

It grinned just like he would. “I’m not _vain_.” It ran to a nearby ladder.

“Be careful. Some of the route to the slipstream drive from here haven’t been repressurized yet or gotten oxygen back.”

“That’s not dangerous for me anymore.” It slid down.

This was going to take some getting used to. She wondered if it would be better or worse once Harper fixed its voice.

   

“There is only one EVA suit,” Tyr growled.

“We only need one EVA suit,” Harper growled back. “Rev’s a Magog, and I don’t need to breathe or have to worry much about pressure. If you want to start helping me maintain a giant warship _and_ a freighter when we get back, _then_ you can complain about how I didn’t get to the EVA suits.”

   

“You are not Seamus Harper,” Tyr said. “You’re a recording inside a machine that’s pretending to be Seamus Harper. You’re an abomination.”

“Blunt and to the point. I would admire that if you hadn’t just called me an abomination.”

   

“Dylan, I have to talk to you,” Harper said.

“That never bodes well. Sure.” Dylan had been expecting this since Harper had failed to pilot slipstream. “Come into my office.”

“Thanks.” Harper walked in but said nothing.

Eventually, Dylan started, “Mr. Harper--”

“I’m not Harper. Not really.”

Here it was. “I know you’re upset about the incident today--”

He shook his head hard. “It’s not just that. I’m not him. I’m pretending, but I’m not. It’s physically impossible for me to be him. I’m stronger and faster than a human being. I can’t really get hurt or sick. I can’t even pilot slipstream. But the worst part is that I can’t do what he did. Dylan, I don’t have that creative spark. I can calculate things at speeds that would boggle the hell out of your mind, but I can’t invent for shit. It looks like his genius was based on him being organic. It was freaking bio-chemical.”

It gave Dylan chills to hear something that looked like Harper speak of Harper as a different person, but that really was the situation. They’d stopped lying to themselves. “What do you mean?”

“I’m pretty level most of the time. Emotionally, I mean. Harper never was. He was up and down and all around. Mostly up, though: happy and in love and enthusiastic and buzzed on the sheer crazy joy of what went through his head. His wild inspirations were based on endorphin, pheromone, and dopamine levels. It came when he was drunk or high. You have no idea how many ideas he had scribbled down on bar napkins. Hunger or fatigue affected it. It came with REM sleep. It was in his unconscious and subconscious.” Harper... the android gripped the edge of Dylan’s desk. “I don’t sleep or need to eat. I don’t dream, and I don’t have an unconscious. My thinking may be fast, but it can’t skip steps or take a left turn into the great unknown like his could. I can’t be him, and I can’t give you what he could.” He looked anguished.

“What do you want to do?” Dylan asked quietly.

“I can’t be Harper, but maybe a clone could. We still have plenty of his genetic material around.”

A clone might be easier for everyone to deal with. “Then you’d download your mind into it?”

The android’s face went utterly still, then he said, “No, that would be too risky. If something went wrong, you’d lose too much. I’ll make a copy and download that. It’s a better idea, because then I could comb through the memories first and make sure we don’t have any degradation. It’s amazing I remember as much as I do, considering the circumstances. Besides, this way I can stick around and keep an eye on him for the first few days, make sure he’s stable.”

   

“Seamus.”

Harper looked down at his chest and saw lights blinking through. “Uh, yeah.”

Brendan looked horrified. “You’re not--”

Brendan looked at him like he wasn’t human. And he wasn’t....

Shit, he did not need this now. “I’m me! I’m me, okay? I just had some trouble up there and needed to get some replacement parts.”

“You’re a cyborg?”

“Yeah.” What were a few more lies to the cause? Brendan didn’t know that Rommie wasn’t really human either. Harper felt sick.

   

“Rommie, I’m not going back,” Harper said. 

“We are not having this conversation,” she answered, a stubborn look on her face.

“The revolution needs me here. _My cousin_ needs me here. I can’t be hurt anymore, not really, so that makes me the perfect way to shove it to the Drago-Jerkoffs.”

“You can be disassembled or destroyed.”

“I can be useful here, and this is my home.”

“This is not your home. This hasn’t been your home in years.”

“These are my people, this is my problem. Nobody else gives a fuck about Earth. It’s a planet of no strategic value, I’m told.”

“Your cousin will find out what you are. It’s inevitable. You won’t eat and you won’t sleep.”

“I don’t care. I started this, Rommie, and I’m not gonna step away while everybody else dies from it. I know what dying can be like, and I don’t want anyone else to go through it who doesn’t have to. My clone on the Andromeda will be ready soon, so you guys won’t go Harperless. Everything will be fine.”

“You haven’t made a copy of your mind for it yet.”

Fuck, he wasn’t thinking. “Okay, then he won’t, but this is important.”

“I won’t let you throw yourself away just because you feel survivor’s guilt.”

“Oh yeah? How are you gonna stop me?”

 

“You have no right to do this!”

“I lost you once,” Rommie said. “I’m not losing you again.”

   

Weird how these diplomatic cocktail parties seemed like even less fun now that he was an android. Then again, maybe it wasn’t weird. He couldn’t drink, and he didn’t find people as sexy as he used to. While he had a sense of smell and could discern the presence of pheromones, he no longer had the bits that reacted to pheromones. 

It really sucked. 

Too many things did. He couldn’t be _Harper_ in this body....

“You’re scaring off our guests,” Rommie said. “Smile.”

“I’m not that ugly.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Actually, yeah.” Something was. Harper felt something but couldn’t nail it down, as if something kept flitting around at the corner of his eye but disappeared when he tried to look at it straight on. “Something’s wrong. I got this weird feeling like we’re missing something. Something wrong.”

“I’m the ship’s AI. If there were some danger, surely I would feel it first.”

“You’re too big, you got too much going on, while I’m small and all about engineering and materials integrity, and I have to tell you that something is not right.”

She gave him a look that made him sigh. That superior attitude annoyed him. Just because he didn’t have a brain the size of a planet didn’t mean he didn’t have skills and didn’t make him an idiot who shouldn’t be listened to.

Wow, was he in a pissy mood. It was kind of nice to know that he still had moods.

Getting nowhere with Rommie, he roamed the room in search of distraction and found a good-looking chick with an attachment he’d never seen before sticking out of her dataport. So he went over to talk, and she actually talked back. She had a nice body, nice hair, _nice_ breasts, all shown off in a tiny outfit, but if she was an archivist, he was the king of France. She couldn’t even _say_ ‘archivist,’ though she’d tried by giving it two different spins. You’d think Common wasn’t her first language. What did she really want? He doubted she wanted to interview him like she’d said or to devour him like a bon-bon like her eyes were telling him.

People had seemed much more interesting, charming, and intelligent back when he could be affected by pheromones. This sucked.

And here came Rommie to chase Satrina away. No interviews allowed. Too bad Harper couldn’t believe that Rommie was jealous.

   

“Those,” Harper pointed his head toward Satrina’s breasts, “are nice. The rest of you I’m not so impressed with.”

   

“Can’t or won’t, Trance? We don’t have to worry about the archive blowing out my brain anymore, because I’ve increased my storage capacities and I can upgrade if that’s still not enough. How about you just admit that it’s your good, not mine, that you’re worried about?”

   

He couldn’t help grinning/sneering at Satrina. “I was a nasty piece of work when I was alive. Now that I’ve died horribly--thanks to your boss--I’m really someone you don’t want to mess with.”

   

“Trance, I told you that the clone was to be au naturel. Getting rid of my... _its_ spine curvature does not fit in there.”

“ _You_ don't have scoliosis.”

“Throwing a drone’s balance a little off just to be more realistic didn’t make sense.”

“Exactly!”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

  

Harper had to keep fighting the urge to edit the memories he’d put into the clone. After all, he had a golden opportunity. Maybe he could ease some of the traumas....

No. Harper might not be Harper without them. How could he know what made flesh Harper the person he’d been?

  

“I didn’t expect the two of you to come up.” It kept shocking Dylan how _young_ the clone body looked without the squint lines around the eyes. Harper didn’t look old enough to be senior staff. 

“Yeah, well, that’s what we’re here to talk about,” the clone said. “He’s not gonna deactivate, and we wanted you to know that. It’d be murder to deactivate him, and he saved my life. And it’s not like you can’t use two engineers.”

“There will be two of you?” It was frightening and disturbing and daunting even to think about, but how could he refuse to accept this without being... evil?

“Yeah,” the android Harper said. “It’s not like we even look exactly alike, and we’re different in other ways. I’ll only get more different as I keep on going, since I don’t have to pretend to be organic anymore. I can become whatever I’m supposed to be.” He looked down, then up again and said, “I don’t want to die again.”

Dylan shuddered. 

“Dylan, if you tried to do anything to him, I would fight you to the--”

“Harper, I’m not going to do anything of the sort. Harper qualifies as sentient artificial life, and I don’t have the right to tell him to end himself.” His headache was getting worse....

“So we’re good. He can stick around?”

“Yes.”

The Harpers grinned and did some kind of celebratory hand-slapping thing. Dylan’s sanity did a slow, sick roll at the sight. And they still had the Harper who lived--sort of--in the matrix....

“Harper.” When both of them stepped forward, Dylan said, “Okay, this is going to be a problem. I don’t care if the two of you have no trouble telling each other apart, we can’t call you both by the same name. In the service, when a unit had two soldiers with the same name, one used a first name or nickname for the benefit of others.”

“Neither of us is going to be called ‘Seamus.’“

“Yeah, that’s not happening. How about ‘Niblet’ for you?”

“Not if you want to keep living.”

“It would be counterproductive to kill me after all the work you put in.”

“I’m not gonna be ‘Zelazny.’ ‘Zee,’ maybe? Nah.”

“‘Zed’?”

The android Harper beamed. “Zed. I like it. But I’m still Harper too. Zed would be like my work identity or something. My nickname.”

  

Zed stiffened when he heard the screaming. Where the hell-- The monitor. The scream was coming from Harper’s room. He threw down his welder and ran, putting on full speed, nearly sliding several meters down the hall while trying to stop in front of Harper’s door. He had to get used to being able to run flat-out now that he didn’t have to pretend to be human anymore.

When he opened the door and stepped inside, he saw that Harper had already turned on the lights. Sweating, shaking, Harper was sitting up in bed trying to breathe. He gasped, “How did you--”

“Considering everything that happened to you, we figured you might have some nightmares.”

“You and Trance. Yeah. Gotcha. Fuck, I wish I could still put this shit in a folder and do an access denied. Fucking subconscious.”

“No, you don’t.” Zed sat down on the bed and pulled him closer, hugging him, smiling as he didn’t resist for even a moment. Cuddleslut. He was so human, so alive, with his heart pounding, stinking of fear and adrenaline, body hot and soft and firm in all the right places. Success. _This_ was Harper.

“Says you. You still don’t have to deal with it.”

Zed stroked his hair. “I’m not you.”

Harper laughed a little and snuggled back. “Can’t we switch off on that now and then? You know, you can be me every third and fifth day of the week?”

“It’ll fade with time.”

“All trauma does. I know, I know. I can’t believe you’re monitoring me.”

“Would you rather I didn’t show up when you needed me?”

“Nah. Just... like I’m a freaking baby and all.”

“You’re my baby.”

“Now I wanna puke.”

“Baby, baby, baby....”

Harper smacked him on the back of the head, which made him laugh.

“Asshole,” Harper muttered, but it sounded fond.

“You want me to stay? I could.”

“Yeah? Uh, not that I _need_ you to--”

“Uh-huh.”

Harper smacked Zed again. “--but it would be, you know, nice to have company. Somebody friendly. Of course, I’ll have to find that somebody....”

“I’m hurt.”

“Not as much as you could be, fella.”

“I’ll stay.”

“Good. So I’ll, uh, wash up a bit and then we’ll go to bed.” Harper looked almost shy. “To sleep, perchance not to dream ever again and all.” Harper wandered off to the bathroom.

Zed changed the sheets, then took off his boots and bounced onto the bed. It probably made him a bad person to be this happy when his other self was so miserable and afraid, but he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t let himself think about how lonely he’d been. No use in it. Whereas here... just because they’d been the same person hadn’t meant that the clone would accept him. The clone might have done that teenage thing of rejecting him utterly as a show of individuality and independence. Instead, Harper wanted him around....

  

“Dylan, I’m worried about the way I’ve seen Zed touching Harper,” Beka said.

“After everything he went through to start Harper, I don’t think he’s going to hurt him,” Dylan answered.

“Not deliberately. I think they might start having sex.”

He didn’t just hear that. He didn’t want to imagine it either. “What?”

“Sex. Together. Them.”

“I heard that. I didn’t want to hear that. I wish I could unhear it.”

“You have to see the way Zed touches him.”

“Zed’s his father in a way.”

“Most civilized societies have laws against fathers touching their kids like that.”

“How does he touch him?”

“All these caresses.”

“Show me.”

Beka gave him a look. “Piss off.”

“This is not a scam. I want to know how you think Zed is touching him if it disturbed you enough to come to me with it.”

She sighed, then placed her hand on his shoulder and ran it down his arm in a soft caress that fluttered from side to side and ended with a drag of her fingertips, making him shudder. He felt it even through his sleeve. “That’s one.” She reached for the small of his back--

He scooted away before her hand could reach him. “I get the point.”

“And.”

“That _is_ a lover’s touch. I personally find it upsetting to think about, but what harm are they doing one another?”

“Dylan, they went through something horrible. Then they survived, in a way, but that way is something nobody else really understands or wants to hear about. I’m worried that they’ll do the easy thing of staying with the one person they don’t have to explain themselves to and get lost in some private world together. They’ve already cut down on how much they talk to the rest of us.”

Damn. “I’ve tried not to show how uncomfortable I sometimes feel when I’m around them.”

“Me too, but I don’t think we’re always successful. I’m more worried for Harper than Zed, and it’s _not_ because Zed is an android. Harper needs connection. He’s a huge cuddleslut, very tactile.”

“I’ve never seen that.”

Beka looked upset. “I don’t cuddle him. Don’t want to lead him on.”

“And Zed isn’t one?” Trying to lighten things a little, Dylan said, “And I hate you for putting these thoughts in my head, Beka.”

“I think that Zed feels alienated. We’re uncomfortable with him, and he has to be aware that the times we weren’t uncomfortable were when we forgot he wasn’t human and treated him like he was Harper. Did you notice that he gave us our distance? He didn’t flirt with me, Dylan. Tyr openly hating him probably didn’t help.” 

“I know there’s a point in here somewhere.”

“Harper expects to be touched and touch other people. Zed didn’t touch other people, and now he’s suddenly all over Harper?”

“He knows that Harper won’t turn him away.”

“I think he’s obsessed with Harper, and not just in an egocentric way, while Harper would go along with anything he asked because Harper feels gratitude toward him, has a big heart, and isn’t getting cuddles from anywhere else. Zed helped him through the post-traumatic stress nightmares by sleeping in the same bed with him.”

“What nightmares?”

“The ‘being dead’ nightmares. All the subconscious stuff Zed avoided by being an android came up when Harper was flesh again.”

“And nobody told me this?”

“ _Andromeda_ told me. Zed and Trance only knew because they’d been monitoring him. I guess he felt they were embarrassing.”

“Or he didn’t want to make us uncomfortable.”

Beka looked unhappy. “He seems to be over them now.”

Watching the two of them work in the machine shop onscreen, Dylan had to admit that Beka was right. Zed touched Harper often, and not in the way family would. Slept in the same bed....

Dylan felt immensely guilty for neglecting two members of his crew. “All right. We’ll talk to them. But you know it won’t go well.”

“That’s a guarantee.”

*****************************************************

Seeing them together in person, watching the two blond heads bent toward one another as they spoke in half sentences that both understood, made it even more immediate. They had their own private world, which might not be a bad thing as long as it didn’t turn into isolation and psychosis. The crew had done the easy thing and avoided the Harpers in an effort to avoid their own discomfort. Of course Harper and Zed would turn to one another.

“Zed, can we have a word with you in the hall?” Dylan asked, though his tone held command.

Zed half-smiled, looking pure Harper. With Harper’s skin so young and unmarked, Zed looked more like Harper than Harper did. That would change eventually, but for now it was deeply unsettling. “What did I do?”

“Anything you guys have to say to him, you can say in front of me,” Harper said as he put his visor up.

“Not really,” Beka answered.

Harper’s expression turned dangerous. “Oh yeah?”

Beka must have seen that he wouldn’t budge, because she just said in front of them both, “We’re worried that you’re going to start _sleeping together_ sleeping together.”

“What? Are you--” Then Harper looked at Zed, who was staring down at his boots. “Oh. Well, what the hell’s wrong with that?” Zed’s head shot up at that. Harper continued, “Who would it hurt? Are you guys that invested in being able to make jokes about how we don’t get any?” 

“I’m afraid you’re going to cut yourselves off from the crew.”

Harper looked pissed off and put his hands on his hips, leaning forward aggressively. “Hey, that’s not something _we_ did.”

Dylan winced. “We want to change that, and we don’t want things to get worse.”

“Fine. Get out. I need time to think. You too, Beka.”

“Are you ordering me around on my own ship?” Dylan asked.

“Are you trying to make a captain’s decision about my freaking sex life? Then yes. I need time to cool down. Out!”

“Harper--” Beka started.

“Out! Get the fuck out now!”

Beka shook her head but turned to go, then grabbed Dylan’s arm and pulled him out too. Once the door closed behind them, she said, “That went well.”

“Do you think we made a difference?”

She looked worried. “Yeah. I just hope it’s not in the wrong way.”

“Then why did we just--”

“I hoped it would help! I didn’t know what else to do!” She sighed. “I didn’t realize that Harper was that angry.”

They really needed to do something to integrate the Harpers back into the crew.

******************************************************

Harper looked at Zed, who wouldn’t look at him. “What do you think inspired that?” Harper asked.

“They must have noticed me touching you.”

“I like to be touched.”

“It’s the way I was doing it.”

Harper moved close to him. “I like the way you touch me.” He hadn’t thought about it before, but he did like it. He wanted more. 

It seemed inevitable.

“They’re right.”

“They’re bigots.”

Zed smirked, then sobered. “You’re so many things to me already.”

“Yeah?”

“Father, son, friend, co-conspirator, brother.”

“Science project, plush toy....”

“Harper, that’s exactly what I mean. It might be too much to add ‘lover’ to the list.”

“I’m fine.”

“You feel gratitude--”

That pissed him off. “Don’t tell me what I feel. I love you.” 

“You-- Of course you do. You love everybody.”

“You fucker.”

“I’m not being insulting. You know I’m not. I don’t like people or find them attractive!”

“I know. It was starting to scare me... us.” 

Harper knew that the android’s growing misanthropy and sense of alienation had contributed to the urge to create a clone to better represent Harper. How could he not? He shared the memories.

“I only liked you. Just you. But being around you, I’m liking people a bit more again. You make me more human....” Zed shook his head as if he could shake the thoughts away. “Fuck, why did they have to come in here with this? I was perfectly happy copping innocent feels.”

Harper backed Zed up against the wall, knowing full well that Zed could knock him away at any time but hoping he wouldn’t. “I love you. I want you. I’m lonely--” 

“Lonely?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Kinda.”

“And I’m horny and want to show myself that I’m alive. I’m desperately curious about how well the body modifications work.”

Zed’s pupils dilated. The Harper did good work. “I’m hard.”

The android didn’t get the hormone- or pheromone-based erections of a human male, but if he saw something he thought attractive, his neural net sent the message to his dick in a way pretty close to the organic model. The dick itself had been such a complicated piece of work....

Harper rubbed himself against Zed. “I can tell.”

“This is such a bad idea.” But his voice sounded husky.

This was fast, but that was the Harper way.

“Says who, Beka and Dylan? They don’t have the right to say. They don’t know what we’ve been through.” When they kissed, Zed finally pulled him in and cupped the back of his head, then ran light, maddening fingers down his spine. “You got a thing about that straight spine?”

“And that baby smooth skin. New and improved Harper body.” Zed tasted vaguely of ozone and electricity.

“Fuck off.”

Zed started to strip him. “I’m not going to bother with the obvious answer.” It looked like he’d stopped fighting this.

Desperately turned on, Harper didn’t have the patience to be undressed like this. He batted Zed’s hands away so he could speed strip, then started on Zed’s clothes, making him laugh. Good to hear. So weird to see a naked reproduction of his old body from the outside again, something he hadn’t done since his days living, if you could call it that, in the matrix. They’d done a good job replicating the scars, but the tattoo ironically looked better than the one on his original body. Zed hadn’t put the scars on the clone body but again the tattoo looked better than it should have. They probably should have expected that, considering that he’d originally gotten it done in a Boston back alley.

They rolled naked on the cot in the corner. Harper stroked Zed’s cock but stopped at the frown he saw. “What?”

“Doesn’t feel exactly like it should. Then again, it’s been a while.”

“Is it good, at least?”

“Yeah, but it’s not right.”

“Perfectionist.”

“Kettle.” Zed pushed him down and sucked at the side of Harper’s neck. It didn’t feel as wet as it should, but who cared? Suction was suction, and this was Zed.... He ran his hands down Zed’s ass, which felt firmer than his ever had.

He was still making love to himself. Kinkier and scary to think that Zed was the inventor and he the creation. Turning things on their heads was a Harper tradition.

“We really should be more coordinated,” Harper groaned after the top of Zed’s head hit the bottom of his chin. With how hard Zed’s synthetic head was, it hurt like hell. Zed went back to sucking on his left nipple and fondling his balls, which distracted from the pain. Spiky blond hair tickled his chin. He loved stroking people with his hair too.

Of course he did. They branched from the same person. Sometimes it really hit him that he was Harper 3.0.

Breathing hard and sweating with lust, Harper saw that Zed didn’t even have a sweat sheen. Didn’t need to breathe either. But when he looked up he had such love in his eyes that Harper challenged anybody to say that Zed wasn’t really alive. Besides, the love there melted _him_ into a puddle of emotion.

“I hadn’t realized that your skin blushes when you get this hot and bothered,” Zed murmured.

“That would be a lot of work to replicate.”

“Maybe too much for me. Peeling off my skin to install whatever we came up with would be off-putting too.” The android body had been upgraded to be more human-like in increments as time and the crisis schedule allowed. It had been... freaky. “I’m attached to my skin.”

“Ow. No wonder people try to shut me up.”

“The blush is really cute on you, though.” Zed ran a finger down Harper’s ribs, then frowned again. “This used to drive us crazy.”

Damn, that brought a chill. “Not anymore.”

“Change is the only constant.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck me.”

Harper’s hips surged up at the thought. “You... you sure?”

For the android body they’d designed a channel and even a sensor section akin to a prostate, but they hadn’t exactly had any candidates to help them test it out. It had seemed to work well enough with a sex toy, but a sex toy didn’t need lubricant to go in and didn’t leave anything behind.

Zed looked annoyed in a very familiar way. Harper saw it in the mirror a lot before he took up residence in the new, younger model of his face. “Would I offer if I didn’t?”

Ah, the patented Harper crankiness. “Do I get to get fucked sometime in the future?” That thought turned his crank hard in ways that should be illegal.

“Fuck. Fuck.” Zed licked his lips, leaving almost no moisture. His old face, turned off and nervous and in love. “I-- I don’t want to hurt you.” Zed could rip Harper’s limbs off in three seconds in a thoughtless moment. A too enthusiastic thrust of hips that didn’t have organic instinct or regulations could tear him up from the inside.

“I trust you.”

Shaking, Zed kissed him. “You fuck me, and then I fuck you?”

“Sounds like a deal.” Harper reached into a drawer for the tube of slick. “Lie back and enjoy the master at work.”

“Our lines are _bad_.” But he settled on his back and spread his legs. Everything looked exactly like it should. Placing the hairs had been such a pain in the ass--heh--but perfectionism had many rewards.

“Complaining already?” As Harper slicked his cock, he tried not to think about how he’d be soon be fucking the tight, virgin hole of his android doppelganger.

Okay, so he wasn’t succeeding at not thinking....

“Just do it already. You’re making me crazy watching you wait.”

Harper lined up and slowly pushed in, not really sure what to expect. Oh, fuck. It was tight and hot, had a bit of buzz and a slightly weird texture but felt _nice_ , and it contracted around him. If he just shot off, he’d hate himself. Then he felt the slight nub of the sensor and rubbed against it hard. Zed spasmed and shouted incoherently. Okay, maybe they’d overdone the response on that a bit.

Zed’s eyelids fluttered, and he wrapped his legs tighter around Harper. “Fuck me. Fuck _me_....”

Harper lived to serve. As he thrust in and out, setting up a rhythm, he noticed that Zed had gone completely uncoordinated. Cause for smugness or concern? Looked like he was enjoying himself, though. Harper tried to last, but the friction was intense, Zed’s hard cock kept rubbing against his skin, and Zed kept contracting on him, squeezing and milking. When Harper came, the sensation ripped through him in a quicksilver wave. It left him wrung out and draped bonelessly on Zed, who smelled sharper after sex.

Smiling, Zed twirled tendrils of Harper’s hair around his fingers. “You staying there?”

“Mmmaybe.”

“You can’t. Not if you wanna get fucked.”

Right. “Move me?”

Zed pulled him out slowly, then positioned him on his back with his legs spread. “You’re art.”

“We could call it ‘Harper After the Gang Bang.’”

“More like ‘Harper Before the Gang Bang.’”

“You invited company? I’m up for it.”

“Nope. You’re mine.” But Zed looked nervous as he slicked his cock up. “My body doesn’t have the ingrained instincts for this.”

“Your mind does. If there’s anything we know, it’s what to do with our hips. Give it to me.”

Zed slowly pushed in, and Harper spread his legs more and tilted his hips a bit for better access. Zed’s cock seemed harder than the regular kind, but Harper didn’t intend to complain. Zed’s hips didn’t quite get the thrusting bit at first, but then memory took over, and Harper bit his lip at how good it felt, long and shuddery and like his nerve endings were lighting up in thanks. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he murmured over and over, writhing under Zed’s heavier body as they did a slow, thorough ride. No better person to be fucked by than yourself. He could feel his heart pounding through his whole body, especially his ass.... “A little harder. Oh, yeah, that’s right....”

So careful, Zed stroked him and whispered phrases against his skin like “I love you” and “I didn’t know if it would work” and “Thank you” and “I’m so happy....” 

It just kept going on and on, leaving Harper a whimpering mass of need. _Could_ Zed come? He could swear there was an off switch somewhere. Did Zed want to come? How long would he be willing to go for? Harper felt another orgasm slowly building at the base of his spine, like climbing uphill but pleasurable.

“Do you like this?” Zed asked, kissing him.

“Mmmm.”

“Does it make you happy?” Kind of a weird hectic light in his eyes.

“Yeah.” Another, harder thrust turned that into a “Fuck, yes!” It kept going. Harper’s hands clenched on Zed’s back as it started to become too much. “Zed, enough. Please. I’m gonna... gonna....”

Zed pulled out slowly, then thrust in harder, and Harper came in a spray of bright stars behind his eyes and through his bones. When he came to, he had Zed kissing and petting him.

“You came, right?” Harper gasped.

“I got mine.” Zed looked satisfied.

“Fuck, that was something. What?”

Zed had an odd look on his face. “I feel kinda weird.”

“Shit. I didn’t--”

“No. If we had to worry about anybody breaking anybody, it would be me breaking you. I mean emotionally. And not in that ‘I fucked my father/son/science project’ way.”

“Thanks.”

“I feel.... I dunno. But I had to know that I was making you happy.”

“Doesn’t sound so weird.”

“I _had_ to. Like a compulsion.” 

Harper kissed Zed. Weird but good. “If it’s still bothering you later, we can think about it. No problem can elude two super geniuses for long. And now, snuggling.”

**Author's Note:**

> If this thing had been a full fic instead of a fragmented WIP, you would have seen the bit dealing with how they overwrote what the clone might have developed into with a massaged version of Harper's memories, so it actually would have been even _more_ disturbing. *g*


End file.
